'Most competent teacher of Marxism'
CR Aslam, the voice of moderation and secularism, is no more
By Saadia Salahuddin
Chaudhry Rehmatullah Aslam (1915-2007) strived all his life for social justice. The boy who was sent to a madrasa to get religious education became the voice of moderation and secularism. Chaudhry Rehmatullah was a hardliner in his philosophy but very soft in his social relations, says his son Qais Aslam.

RIPPLE EFFECT
Post-Lal Masjid duplicity
By Omar R. Quraishi
Following the events of Lal Masjid in which -- if one believes the government -- dozens died (or if one believes the MMA, then several hundred), there seems to be some kind of effort being made by some in the print and electronic media (particularly the vernacular print media) to make heroes out of those who died. Much of the post-assault comment has been highly charged and wrought with emotion -- not really a good recipe usually for a journalist to make a comment, not least because it is unlikely to be balanced and will probably sway to one extreme end. What does one make of articles where the death of two sisters is lamented in a long article written in the form of an elegy?

followup
On the face of it

Details surfacing after 'Operation Silence' have given new dimensions to the whole scenario

  By Noreen Haider

The operation Lal Masjid has left many questions unanswered in its wake. The public opinion is visibly divided on the issue. According to some the operation was long overdue. There are others who believe that that Lal Masjid 'show' was staged by the government but it grew out of all proportions in the end.

The ulema of Wafaq-ul-Madaris claim they had reached an agreement with Ghazi Abdul Rashid in the end but the president changed the draft of the original agreement and the altered version was not acceptable to Ghazi. It was at that point that the negotiations broke down for the last time.

This was an operation like none other before. The main character of the whole drama was the Naib Khatib of Jamia Masjid who was a well known figure and had access to media and independent channels throughout the six months from the initiation of Lal Masjid episode till the very last day of his life. Even the day he died he talked to the reporters and media people on his mobile phone showing that he had every opportunity to convey his views or demands to the world.

He was repeatedly asked by the famous TV anchors to come out and surrender but that was never an option for him. The world perhaps for the first time witnessed famous TV anchors negotiating with the so-called commander of whatever people were held up inside. If he was innocent as he claimed talking to them and had no militants to hide then what was the point in taking the forces head on in an aggressive manner.

A security person, who was a part of the operation, on condition of anonymity told TNS that military commandos had to face the toughest resistance from inside the mosque. "The militants were highly trained and watched each and every move of the security forces and planned their strategies accordingly. They were hiding in minarets and on the roofs with long range weapons which they fired on the army personnel outside the compound. Even after the final assault when the forces entered the compound of the mosque they faced heavy fire and fierce resistance. More than 40 security personnel including those of the armed forces received bullet injuries and then lost their lives."

The walls of the madrasa were made of reinforced concrete and the security forces failed to bring them down even by bulldozers. The only way the walls could be breached was by the use of dynamite, he said.

The leaders of the so called Islamist political parties, it seems, wasted no time to exploit the situation to the best of their advantage.They started issuing statements to fan the already aggravated situation. Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman never tried to interfere in the Lal Masjid affair but was the first to give an exaggerated figure of the death toll.

Some of them tried to distance themselves from the whole affair and those who negotiated admitted that the two cleric brothers refused to listen to anybody. Same goes for the efforts of Ijaz-ul-Haq and Chaudhry Shujaat. The ulema never became part of the solution and nobody took the responsibility of controlling the activities of the cleric brothers.

The media all through kept pointing the finger toward the illegal activities of Lal Masjid but the authorities had almost a lame attitude towards the whole thing. Questions were being raised regarding government's indifference. There was growing unrest among the people about the larger picture that was emerging out of the whole Lal Masjid situation.

On the surface the Chinese episode appears to have proved to be the last straw on the camels back but analysts think there were bigger players involved and someone backing the cleric brothers decided to take away their patronage at last.

The outcome of Lal Masjid operation has proved that it was a failure in terms of strategy and tactics. Although president Musharraf has been trying to win the war against terror decisively but this war cannot be won by force alone.

The fallout of Lal Masjid has been massive with a large number of casualties of security personnel in the series of bombing in Swat, D I Khan and Waziristan. In the heart of capital Islamabad 17 people lost their lives and 40 were wounded in what seems to be the revenge for a statement made by Benazir Bhutto after Lal Masjid operation.

He will speak no more

The political landscape of the country has become even more barren with Rafiq Ahmed Sheikh's death

By Altaf Ahmad Qureshi

Rafiq Ahmed Sheikh spoke throughout his life but has been silenced by death and we will not hear him anymore. The last time I met him was on the day he was hospitalised. He saw and recognised me. I kissed his cold cheeks and he wept. It was the first time I saw tears in his eyes. He did not weep when his younger son Tauseef was murdered.

"I weep inside every day, every moment. But I don't want to make others feel that I am a weak man," he told me when I asked him if he was a wicked man who did not weep over his son's death.

His elder son cannot walk, rather can't move on his own as both his legs were chopped to save his life. He lost his mentally balance due to police torture when he was jailed during Zia's regime. His younger son's wife gave birth to a boy after her husband's murder and it was Rafiq Ahmad Sheikh who raised him up and it was the courageous Sheikh Sahib who made his daughter-in-law to agree to re-marry and he married her off like his own daughter.

Rafiq Ahmad Sheikh belonged to a middle class family and remained so all his life -- till his death. He was a legendary politician who remained loyal to his party and its leadership and stuck to his ideals. He was a great speaker and could speak for hours even without any sound system.

"I am going," he told me in a very weak voice. "Where?" I asked him laughingly. He raised his finger upward and I said " Sheikh Sahib? You have fought against death all your life and you will be the winner again." He smiled and I could see tears rolling out of his eyes. I could not face this and came out of his room.

He was a people's man. He was a child while sitting amongst children and played games with them and he was equally comfortable with young boys and knew exactly what they love to talk about while accompanying them. He was a serious thinker where there was some discussion. He could improvise stories whenever required. A few people know that he was a boxer in his school and college days. Late Safdar Mir and Rafiq Ahmad Sheikh were known as boxers of Progressive Writers movement (though Rafiq Ahmad Sheikh was not a writer, he used to take part in all the activities of the Progressive Writers Association).

Rafiq Ahmad Sheikh started his political career with the All India Muslim League and remained an office bearer of the Muslim Students Federation. He used to participate in the political activities of the Indian communist Party. When Mian Iftikhar ud Din, Sheikh Muhammad Rashid and Mian Mehmood Ali Kasuri formed the Azad Pakistan Party, Rafiq Ahmad Sheikh joined it. Later on he joined the National Awami Party. On the request of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Mian Mehmood Ali Kasuri joined the Pakistan People's Party, just a few days before the 1970 general elections, Rafiq Ahmad Sheikh also joined the PPP and remained its part and parcel till his death.

Till about six months before his death, he had been attending party functions despite his ill health. He wished to see Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto back in her country before his death but destiny drove him away before his desire turned into reality.

Nowhere to go

Thousands of people in Shadadkot, Dadu and Thatta still await food, drinking water and medical facilities

  By Adeel Pathan

As the country comes under the grip of suicide attacks, the devastation caused by flood and pre-monsoon rains in many districts of Sindh and Balochistan has been put on the back burner. The situation of relief activities remains poor as thousands of peoples in three districts of Sindh including Qambar-Shadadkot, Dadu and Thatta are still living under open sky after cyclone hit the coasts of Sindh.

Despite government claims of practical solutions in these areas the affectees are protesting over shortage of relief items. On top of that, the protestors are said to be tortured by the police.

According to officials, the reason for the deteriorating situation in these areas of Sindh was not cyclone and rainwater but the consistently multiplying problems on account of negligence and breaches in canals. Floodwater has now reached Dadu district through Main Nara Valley (MNV) flooding hundreds of villages in the district.

Sassi Palejo, an MPA from Sindh and a resident of Thatta district told TNS that thousands of people not only in her district and constituency but across Sindh are facing shortage of water and food. "I think the authorities and government consider Thatta and coastal belt as part of some other country," she said, adding that more than 20,000 people are still waiting for relief goods and government's emergency centres were not functioning at all.

"I visited many areas and six union councils of my constituency where not a single official had turned up for relief. Communication is one of the biggest problems of the coastal belt where no landlines or mobile networks work," said Sassi Palejo. She said the government forcefully evacuated the villagers whose houses had collapsed or damaged in rains and cyclone and not a single camp exists in Thatta -- this despite repeated complaints in the provincial assembly.

The additional relief commissioner of Sindh Munir Memon when asked to comment on police torture to the affectees said that no such incident has been brought to his notice so far. He told TNS that police needs to maintain law and order and brief people about the current situation.

Zafar Ali Leghari, a former minister from Dadu district, said that hundreds of villages have been submerged and thousand of peoples of his district are living under the open sky with local and provincial authorities paying no attention.

The Federal Minister for Water and Power Liaquat Ali Khan Jatoi admitted that recent floodwater coming from Balochistan inundated around 100 villages of Mehar, K N Shah and Johi -- all talukas of district Dadu. He said the government is trying the level best to provide relief and rehabilitate to the thousands rendered homeless but the opposition is trying to politicise the situation through rumours. The minister said that 2,000 acre agricultural lands of his family is inundated by flood water but the opposition leaders who dared not visit the affected areas have alleged that to save his land he got many villages inundated.

There is a long lists of government functionaries who visited the flood and rain affected areas of Sindh including the ruling PML chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussein to Sindh Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Raheem along with ministers and advisers. However, according to reports of the local media, the relief good these functionaries promised were never distributed by revenue staff and police.

"The Lal Masjid issue swallowed the miseries of the people of Sindh," said Parvano Bhatti, a senior intellectual who contributes for a Sindhi daily. "The rulers are not worried about such 'minor' issues."

There is a dire need to accelerate the relief activities in these areas as the number of affectees is growing who are facing shortage of food and tents added with unbearable heat and no clean drinking water. The district authorities as well as provincial relief authorities need to evolve a systematic approach to provide relief to the people and also take notice of the police's inhuman actions.

Taal Matol
Racias in Lahore and Mumbai!

  B y Shoaib Hashmi

The area around the tomb of Anarkali was the first and nearest 'suburb' of the old walled city of Lahore. It had Wazir Khan's 'Baradari' nearby, then French General Ventura built himself a nice bungalow, then the Brits took it all over and housed the bureaucracy there -- after mounting a cross on Anarkali's tomb and turning it into a church. If you don't believe me go look in the grounds of the Lahore Cathedral, where they still have the cross and a little plaque telling its story.

The point is that the bureaucracy got a whole place where they could meet and work and plot and scheme. And then one day they were looking at the map of the city and they noticed this great tract of land right in the middle between Jail Road and the Mall, prime property and a plot well worth scheming over which was the Lahore Race Course.

They decided to throw the 'racias' out and divide the place into corner plots and stuff for themselves. Fortunately, for us, Governor Ghulam Jillani Khan was in charge, who was a decent man, and had spent some time at 'Shanti Niketan' delving in the arts. He got wind of the plan and put a spanner in the works and insisted they turn the place into 'Race-Course Park.'

It was all because the Brits, wherever they went, also took cricket and drama, and also horse racing. And being colonial masters they chose the most wonderful spaces for the courses; the race-courses in Bombay and Calcutta were famous for their elegance, as also those in the West Indies .

Around here a family named Taj had some kind of a monopoly for supplying the race-courses, and built themselves magnificent mansions alongside all called 'Taj Palaces.' The one in Lahore is probably still there lost somewhere among the clinical laboratories. On the other side, in Lahore, the bureaucracy got their own houses so they could look over the wide green expanse.

Oddly enough I landed up when a very similar row was brewing in Bombay, or Mumbai if you prefer. The Mahalaxmi Race-Course is also thousands of acres of prime land in the heart of the city which is beautifully maintained and manicured by the 'Racias' of Mumbai in the form of some club or something, to which the authorities had leased the 'sarkari' land and the lease is due to run out in 2013.

The current Mayor of Mumbai happens to be a lady, and a comely one at that, and she visited the race-course last week. She learned that the 'racias' paid a piddling sum of a few thousand rupees a year for the lease of the land, whereas even at very reasonable lease rates, the place could fetch the city in the neighbourhood of two hundred crores a year! This is the kind of sum which makes a bureaucrats mouth drool. She did!

So she immediately drew plans not to renew the lease in 2013, to build a humongous underground car park there and build whatever on top; and the saga of Governor Jillani is being played out there word for word and scene for scene. The 'racias' are yelling that the race-course is a historic landmark and one of the few green recreational spaces left in the concrete jungle.

Their opponents are screaming that an elitist group of a few thousand is hogging the space which belongs to the people, and robbing the government of crores into the bargain. The 'racias' say they are not elitist and are providing wholesome entertainment to the public at large. The only difference from Lahore is that they can't fling faith at them because gambling is not forbidden and a lot of it goes on at Diwalee too!

issue
The Tuesday bomb

The bomb blast in the centre of the capital has been variously interpreted...

  By Nadeem Iqbal

If we compare the TV images of war zones with that of screen reports emanating from Islamabad in the month of July then these images are as horrible as that of a war zone like in Afghanistan, Baghdad, Beirut or Tel Aviv.

The Tuesday suicide blast occurred in the late evening around 8:30 p.m, when traffic was thin in a city struggling to get normal after the gory incident in Lal Masjid. The blast killed 18 people and injured around 50 others. The venue of the carnage was district court in F-8 markaz at a Pakistan People's Party (PPP) reception camp outside the venue of a lawyers' rally which was to be addressed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

The incident occurred about 20 minutes before the arrival of the chief justice's motorcade and about 100 yards away from the place where Chief Justice Iftikhar was to address the Islamabad Bar Council meeting. The offices of the chief commissioner, the deputy commissioner and the SSP Islamabad are not more than 100 yards away from the scene of the suicide attack. The police have recovered the head of what it claims to be the suicide bomber from about 50 yards away from the scene and handed it over to sensitive intelligence agencies.

Asim Shahbaz Malik, a lawyer told TNS that around 10 minutes before the blast he along with his fellow lawyers was standing there. They called one of their friends who was accompanying the Chief Justice's procession. When they found out that the CJ's arrival is late by over 20 minutes they went to a nearby restaurant to have tea. There they heard a big bang and rushed to the spot.

Although the government has dubbed the blast a suicide bombing, the lawyers reject the official version. The lawyers believe that it was not a suicide hit, rather the bomb was placed on the site. Other theories taking rounds of the capital include that it was a reprisal of military action in Lal Masjid while many believe that it was targeted at PPP for extending support to Musharraf regarding its operation.

Federal Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said that the blast took place outside the address venue (almost 100 metres away from the venue) and looked like a suicide blast. He said the address venue was fully screened and the suicide bomber exploded himself near the walk-through gate, while attempting to enter the address venue.

The Islamabad District Bar Association (IDBA) has strongly condemned the suicide blast in district court Islamabad, and has scoffed at government's theory of treating it as a involvement of Lal Masjid.

In an emergency meeting held in the Bar room, and convened by president IDBA, advocate Haroon-ul-Rashid, secretary general, advocate Syed Muhammad Tayyab floated a resolution strongly condemning the suicide bombing, and demanded an immediate open judicial inquiry about the incident. The resolution also maintained that such acts cannot weaken the efforts of lawyers' movement. The lawyers also announced that the incident was not a suicide blast, but rather the bomb was placed on site, while the motorbike found destroyed belonged to a deceased Tariq Abbasi.

Interestingly the suicide attempt did not occur unexpectedly. In fact on the day of the blast, quoting sensitive agency sources, The News reported that eight suicide bombers have entered Islamabad in two strides to hit their targets. A high level meeting of Taliban leaders, chaired by Baitullah Mehsood in Wana, has decided to carry out suicide attacks and explosions against key government leaders, military installations and police offices, the report said.

It said that a suicide bomber, 22-year-old Mir Ali, having blue eyes, wearing Shalwar Kamiz, entered Islamabad the other day with a sabotage plan as a member of the advance party. The other group of seven terrorists, which entered the federal capital on Sunday, would follow the directives of Mir Ali, who has been living in Islamabad and is aware of the location of the given targets, the report said.

A similar warning was issued in October last year when a number of live rockets were found in different locations of the capital. Early in January this year, a suicide bomber blew himself while trying to enter the Marriott hotel killing a security guard and injuring three others.

'Most competent teacher of Marxism'
CR Aslam, the voice of moderation and secularism, is no more

  By Saadia Salahuddin

Chaudhry Rehmatullah Aslam (1915-2007) strived all his life for social justice. The boy who was sent to a madrasa to get religious education became the voice of moderation and secularism. Chaudhry Rehmatullah was a hardliner in his philosophy but very soft in his social relations, says his son Qais Aslam.

His father was the only educated person in his village near Sheikhupura. One of his twin sons Dr. Qais Aslam, who is head of the department of Economics at Government College University Lahore, says, a teacher at the madrasa encouraged CR Aslam to read. His school was 14 km away from home. He and his brother would walk down to the school and come back the same way. On the way to school was a canal which the two brothers would cross by swimming daily. This also built his stamina, kept him sturdy and in good health all his life.

While Chaudhry Saheb's elder brother was sent to study medicine, CR took permission from his father to study himself. After matriculation, he joined FC College. There he became involved in student politics. Yahya Bakhtiar was his good friend. He was elected president students union. A.T Chaudhry and C.R Aslam were batchmates at FC College. After that he did LLB from the Punjab University and joined the Military Accounts department. He joined Communist Party of India in 1940.

Malik Aslam, President National Workers Party Punjab, who had a long association with CR Aslam, says, "He was the only competent teacher of Marxism in this region." Malik Aslam met him in 1964 when he started practising law and joined him in National Awami Party in 1965 which he calls a thinking party. "There was a breakup in the party on the issue that ultimate objective of NAP was social change. This faction was represented by CR Aslam, the other faction by Wali Khan and Kasuri. There used to be Gardenia Hotel where now stands Vanguard. Here we held a press conference and NAP Bhashani group was formed," recalls Malik Aslam.

CR Aslam posed intellectual challenge to the people around him. "He would put an issue before his peers and ask them how they looked at it. When everyone had spoken, he would give his view saying, 'can we look at it like this as well'. He was a great teacher who could teach an absolutely uneducated person as well."

Malik Aslam recalls him as a very kind person. "Many people owe their education to him. He would pay their dues and never mention that ever. Those who received these favours told people about it. When somebody asked CR, he would say, 'how can I pay. I myself don't have money'. He would not express his displeasure to anyone."

CR Aslam remained intellectually and politically active throughout his life. When Cabinet Mission Plan was rejected by Nehru, CR held rallies in Lahore in protest. And on August 14 he as general secretary of North Western Railway, went along with Mirza Mohammad Ibrahim to Karachi and took out a torch-bearing procession to celebrate freedom.

"The country was divided because of Congress, for Jinnah and the communist party had agreed to the three regions proposal. Only Congress did not," says Malik Aslam, CR's friend and disciple. While Qais Aslam says: "Two parties created Pakistan -- the Muslim League and the Communist Party which broke into two. The fact that Communist Party was ready to split, meant they were in favour of Pakistan. They were infact upholders of the ideology of this country."

"If people like CR Aslam were there tragedies like Lal Masjid would have never taken place. A gap is created when democratic forces are suppressed. The governments have been destroying forces whom people trust," Dr Qais goes on to say.

CR Aslam was jailed several times for raising his voice. "In the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case five of the eight generals were with us but Sardar Shaukat got afraid and by then the American camp had become strong," says Qais.

"CR was accused as Chinese and Russian agent by Mullah but he held on to his ideology till the end. He was offered ministries by Ayub, Bhutto and Yahya Khan. He refused them all. He asked them to get out of the pro-American military pacts, give proportionate representation to the workers and parliaments and nationalise debts. No government accepted that. Now Musharraf has given 33 per cent representation to women, so his demands were right," says Qais Aslam.

"Bhutto always wanted to make friends with my father who believed that Bhutto had hijacked the idea of socialism which had been cultivated by the socialists of this country. My father had two loves -- socialism and my mother."

Bhutto was the first to allow CR Aslam to go out of the country -- to a peace conference in Paris as a delegate.

He wanted to be known as editor 'Awami Jamhooriat', a monthly pamphlet, in which he took up issues one at a time. The subjects varied from socialism, how to make a budget which would benefit people, industries in the public sector etc. He suggested to put a complete ban on import of luxury items and spend the money on agriculture and industry. If someone wants to know about his ideology and convictions, these booklets he wrote are the best source. Among these booklets is one on his views on Allama Iqbal.

He used to walk a lot till the end of his life and had good eating habits. He took a glass of milk morning and evening and the household did not use chillies at all. An early riser, he would not sleep without listening to news. And he would say to his children, "Never carry the world on your shoulder, let it roll by." Probably, this lifestyle was the secret of his longevity.

RIPPLE EFFECT
Post-Lal Masjid duplicity

  By Omar R. Quraishi

Following the events of Lal Masjid in which -- if one believes the government -- dozens died (or if one believes the MMA, then several hundred), there seems to be some kind of effort being made by some in the print and electronic media (particularly the vernacular print media) to make heroes out of those who died. Much of the post-assault comment has been highly charged and wrought with emotion -- not really a good recipe usually for a journalist to make a comment, not least because it is unlikely to be balanced and will probably sway to one extreme end. What does one make of articles where the death of two sisters is lamented in a long article written in the form of an elegy?

Many of those commenting on the Lal Masjid brothers, especially Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi who died, seem to completely forget the blatant and repeated violation of the law that they and their band of extremist vigilantes indulged in for several months. These critics of the assault argue that the option to give safe passage to Maulana Ghazi should have been agreed to by the government -- again forgetting that nowhere in the world would a government want to give such a concession in the kind of situation that had developed at Lal Masjid.

They also quite conveniently forget that agreeing to give 'safe passage' to Maulana Ghazi would have sent a terrible message to ordinary law-abiding citizens, most of whom would think that perhaps they too could go around enforcing their version of religion by force on others and escape any government censure or punishment.

The fact is that a lot of people who are voicing these views are ideologically very close to the Maulana brothers and the dangerous thing in their thinking is that what the brothers did was somehow not that serious -- hence their end, according to these people, was disproportionately much crueler than their deeds demanded. Running a state within a state, going about dispensing a parallel government,issuing fatwas against sitting ministers, forcing shops to close, kidnapping policemen, kidnapping and abducting innocent women (along with an infant), and kidnapping and abducting citizens of a friendly country are all surely crimes that most Pakistanis would be immediately sent to jail for. But here we had the PML-Q chief, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, discussing the possibility of letting the Lal Masjid brothers live a life of obscurity back in their village in southern Punjab and at the same time agreeing to pay for their mother's health treatment

No one is saying that the government should not have offered at least the latter but the fact that such concessions are unheard of and should never even be considered when deeds as criminal as those mentioned above are involved seems to have all been forgotten in the emotion and recrimination following the Lal Masjid assault.

Lest one be accused of supporting what the government did, let me say for the record that operation could not have been wholeheartedly supported because of the deaths it would have and did cause but at the same time, it should also be said that what else could the government do? All those who are now criticizing Benazir Bhutto and her party for advocating -- as they say -- the deaths of innocent women and children need to look at what she said.

And this brings us to the disingenuous bit of the whole debate. There have been some voices who are equating the stance that the government had no option but to do what it did with support. That those inside the compound be killed. This is nothing but false and presenting such an argument is not only contrary to the facts but also seems an attempt to discredit those progressive and forward-looking Pakistanis who do not see eye-to-eye with the ways of the jihadis/extremists. Those making such arguments have also -- and this too is a lie -- been forwarding the view that many liberals who wanted the government to act against the Lal Masjid clerics rejoiced and celebrated the operation --in effect implying that the liberals celebrated the deaths of 'innocent women and children' in the operation.

Again, nothing can be farther than the truth than such statements. One has been reading all shades of opinion prior to the operation, while it was going on and after it and nowhere did one find even a single writer expressing possible glee or advocating the view that the state should attack Lal Masjid with all its might. In fact, one would like to ask those who have said that some people have celebrated the operation that could they kindly identify the source for this incredible piece of information.

The rank emotionalism that has crept into commentary following the operation has also ended up blurring the clear distinction between religiosity and criminality. Maulana Ghazi and his students are being lionised but one is unclear. Even senior government functionaries keep on saying that the students, especially the girls, were 'innocent.' But isn't this premature because it remains unclear just how many of these girls were actually under the age of 18 and whether all of them did not participate in any of the vigilante acts that the students of Jamia Hafsa became known for.

In many cases in the country, children as young as 12 or 13, usually driven by poverty, commit petty theft and end up being tried for this as adults. One never calls them innocent or even considers the possibility of letting them off - in fact, many children end up going to jail where they are housed with adults and often convicted criminals, and one doesn't see any top politician springing to their defence or calling them 'innocent.'

Of course, those who brainwashed the Jamia Hafsa students are more to blame for their misdeeds but the fact remains that claiming that one was brainwashed by his or her religious teacher is not really a good defence in a court of law -- though in the eyes of many people in this country,it seems to be. In any case, there is a difference between a ten-year-old picking up a stone and throwing it at the police and an eighteen year old using force to close a shop selling DVDs and then harassing other shopkeepers. Surely many of those who gave themselves up or were exonerated by some in the government must have been guilty of these acts. Also, the question could be boiled down to this -- if the government were to catch a 16-year-old madrasa student who confesses to being trained as a suicide bomber, then will it willingly let him off and allow him to go home or will it prosecute him, despite his young age, for holding such views -- which are clearly inimical to society's well-being.

The writer is Op-ed Pages Editor of The News.

Email: omarq@cyber.net.pk

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